


Of All Things

by sinfuldesire_archivist



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, Drama, During Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-09-07
Updated: 2006-09-06
Packaged: 2018-09-03 10:51:20
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 10,871
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8709538
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sinfuldesire_archivist/pseuds/sinfuldesire_archivist
Summary: As it turns out, the apocalypse is practically a wet dream for necromancers.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Note from the Sinful Desire archivists: this story was originally archived at [Sinful-Desire.org](http://fanlore.org/wiki/Sinful_Desire). To preserve the archive, we began importing its works to the AO3 as an Open Doors-approved project in November 2016. We e-mailed all creators about the move and posted announcements, but may not have reached everyone. If you are (or know) this creator, please contact us using the e-mail address on [Sinful Desire collection profile](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/sinfuldesire/profile).

Title: Of All Things  
Author: Impertinence  
Rating: Adult  
Pairing: Sam/Dean  
Warning: Disturbing content.  
Summary: As it turns out, the apocalypse is practically a wet dream for necromancers.  
  
  
  
[ ](http://absenteye.livejournal.com/profile)[**absenteye**](http://absenteye.livejournal.com/) made me a GORGEOUS banner. \o/ [Looky!](http://pics.livejournal.com/impertinence/pic/0000kx1f)  
  
  
Part One  
  
||  
  
“I’m telling you, man, this isn’t normal.”  
  
“Are you honestly surprised?” Sam’s tapping the map, more hyperactive than Dean was that one time Dad left them in a Starbucks for ten hours straight. Dean doesn’t bother asking why. Another job, another town—it’s all they live for now.  
  
“Leprechauns. In. Nebraska.”  
  
“Yeah, so?”  
  
As a general rule Dean would smack him or something, but since his left arm still hasn’t healed from that bitch of an exorcism a couple weeks ago he settles for not-so-accidentally stomping on Sam’s toes.  
  
“Ow!”  
  
And now his little brother’s hopping around with his bitchface on, clutching his sneaker like his life depends on it. Dean’s debating between making a crack about horse shit, since they’re in Kentucky and all, and telling Sam to get his lazy ass down to a Goodwill and buy some boots when it starts to rain.  
  
“Ah, fuck.” He snatches the map off the truck bed and all but runs over to the passenger side. By the time Sam de-pussifies and slides into the driver’s seat he’s got his glasses on and his boots on the dash.  
  
Something smug and funny is on his lips but Sam, the little bastard, beats him to it. “What’s the matter—scared the rain’ll make the hair gel run down and freeze your face?”  
  
“Least it won’t make me smell like a wet dog, Shaggy,” he retorts. He doesn’t open his eyes when Sam turns the ignition, but not because it still hurts him to hear the truck’s rough rumble or anything. Nah. He’s just…too cool to even bother with shit like open eyes.   
  
Yeah.  
  
So Sam starts the car and they drive out, crawling at a snail’s pace because of the fucking rain, and Dean’s not sure if it’s because Sam’s a wimp or because he learned how to drive on the Impala that they’re going so slow.  
  
“You know, making it to Nebraska before I die of old age would be a good thing,” he says after the first hour’s come and gone, joggling his leg impatiently.  
  
Sam doesn’t even look at him. “I don’t feel like hydroplaning, thanks.”  
  
Dean not-so-idly wonders if he could wrestle the wheel from Sam without trashing the truck.  
  
_broken glass and bones, Sam whimpering and Dean yelling and Dad, silent as the grave Dean suddenly knows they’ll be putting him in_  
  
…maybe not.  
  
Instead he settles for sighing loudly, and shifting, and tapping out a drum solo on the window, and humming Zeppelin, and—  
  
“Would you _stop it!_ ”  
  
Instead of answering he pokes Sam’s shoulder.  
  
He expected Sam to bitch, maybe squeal or squeak because Sam does that when he’s frustrated, but instead his little brother grits his teeth and jerks the wheel suddenly to the left.  
  
They screech off the wet road, into the media, and for the first time Dean notices that the rain’s coming down really fucking hard, so much that he can barely see out the window and— _holy shit_ —if Sam fucks this car up he and Dean are going to have some _words._  
  
As soon as they stop Dean starts yelling. “What the fuck was that, huh? You tryin’ to kill us both or something?”  
  
“Dean.”  
  
“Shut the hell up, I’m not done. I was joking, man. Pulling that kind of shit on a highway isn’t funny, it’s dangerous, and if I have to drive then so help me—“  
  
“ _Dean._ ”  
  
Sam’s voice is way more desperate than it should be given that Dean’s only planning on kicking him around a little, but when he turns and looks out the window again he sees why.  
  
The sky is a dark, murky orange.  
  
Okay. He can deal with this. He can figure out why the sky suddenly changed color and it’s raining and now cars all over the highway are crashing.  
  
It doesn’t occur to him until after Sam unbuckles himself and vaults over the seat, his humongous body squishing Dean’s as a flying hunk of metal just barely misses the truck, that maybe he can’t.  
  
“Get the hell off of me, man!”  
  
But all the wiggling he can manage just makes Sam hold on tighter. “I’m bigger,” Sam yells into his ear, and now is really _not_ a good time to be so fucking close. “Just hold still, okay? We don’t know what’s going on.”  
  
It’s rare for them, because generally if something supernatural is happening then they at least know the cause. But for all they know this isn’t supernatural at all, this is the government or an alien invasion—  
  
And that last thought makes Dean laugh out loud because God, this is War of the Worlds and he’s either Tom Cruise or Dakota fucking Fanning.  
  
He wishes now that he’d convinced Dad to let him see that movie.  
  
They lie like that for—well, to be honest, Dean’s not even sure how long, since the power on the truck’s been killed. Long enough for them to both get sweaty and for the panic to start in. Also long enough for Sam’s arms to give in.  
  
Dean just wraps his arms around Sam tighter when he falls onto Dean’s chest.  
  
After awhile the sound of pounding rain and screeching metals stops and they sit up cautiously. The first thing Dean notices is the smell, a tangle of things he’s way too familiar with: burnt rubber, charred flesh, blood.  
  
The second thing he notices is Sam, because his brother’s collapsing back into the car, staring in shock and horror at the highway in front of them.  
  
“Well, what’d you expect?”  
  
His words fall flat, acerbic and weirdly loud, even though just minutes ago there was so much chaos that Sam wouldn’t’ve even been able to hear him. Sam doesn’t even look at him, just says, “Not this.”  
  
No, not this, because there are dead bodies strewn all over the highway, crashed cars and fires everywhere. Not this, because he can’t see a single living person no matter how far down the pancake-flat road he stares.  
  
“What now?” Sam whispers, and it sounds appropriate. Who knows how many dead they’re mourning now?  
  
“We need to keep moving.” He’s not even sure where the words come from, knows he doesn’t care.  
  
“But—“  
  
“Keep. Moving.”  
  
When Sam still looks at him askance Dean pushes him over and jams the key into the ignition. It’s the first time he’s driven a vehicle since the Impala was totaled and it hurts, but the stench of the dead is an acute enough pain that the other barely even registers.  
  
_Panic._ It starts when Sam doesn’t bother to buckle his seatbelt, because Jesus. It’s _Sam._ Yesterday Dean would’ve joked that the world could end and Sam would still follow the rules. Today it did and he’s not, and that’s enough to make his hands shake and his breath come short.  
  
Ghosts, demons, fighting and hunting for twenty-two years. All so they could save a world that’s ending in ashes as they watch.  
  
“Dean, we gotta go offroad.”  
  
Wonderful. Everybody’s dead or dying, but _now_ Sam’s keeping his head. “Why’s that?”  
  
“Look down the road. Dean, how’re we going to get through?”  
  
He looks obediently. The sky still glows orange, dark and menacing. Enough to make him wish, almost pray, that it’d go blue again. _Please, anything, just take back the last hour. Please._  
  
“The road, Dean.”  
  
Sam keeps saying his name, soft and enunciated. _Dean._ Like he needs reminding of who he is, and it pisses him off because he’s not the one always judging by what the outside world thinks. By all rights Sam should be falling apart, especially with the whole psychic thing he’s got going on. Did he hear them cry out in his head? Did he ever dream about this? Did he—  
  
Dean doesn’t realize that he’s staring at the broken bodies and twisted metal littering the road, doesn’t realize that the dancing flames of a burning 18-wheeler have entranced him, until Sam places a huge paw gently over the white-knuckled hand gripping the steering wheel.  
  
“Dean…”  
  
He yanks his hand away like he’s been burned. In that part of his mind that he only explores after a fight or in the hospital facing down death, when _maybe_ and _sometimes_ feel less like sin, he knows that he has been burned in a way. Always is, even when it’s innocent.  
  
And that’s…a thought that he really needs to not be having right now.  
  
His head jerks to the side. Sam’s staring at him, wide eyes concerned and nervous. Dean gulps and yanks on the wheel, pulling them off the road and into the woods. There’s a narrow road where the trucks go to check the power lines; he figures they can follow that.  
  
As they drive Dean sees a bald eagle swooping overhead. For a second he smiles—but then the damn thing coasts down and he realizes it’s just a vulture.  
  
Still: animal life. That means whatever caused the crash was human.  
  
He’s not sure if that makes it better or worse.  
  
The going is slow simply because the road is narrow, and Dean doesn’t want to hit the gas too hard anyways. There’s a little voice in the back of his mind that keeps reminding him of the likelihood that the next gas station they come to will be abandoned (or full of dead people, but _no_ he’s not thinking about that) and dry.  
  
He’s not sure how long they keep it up, weaving through God knows how many miles of wood, straight south by Dean’s estimation. They ought to have hit a highway by now; the thought occurs that they’re traveling alongside the highway, and it makes him shake.  
  
“It’s okay to be scared, you know.”  
  
The word makes him jerk the car sharply to the left, almost plowing into the electrical pole. And who knows, he thinks wildly, if there’s even electricity in it anymore? For all he knows the electric plants have all been bombed, or hit with the whatever-it-was that happened on the highway.  
  
God. He’s going insane.  
  
He doesn’t realize he’s stopped driving until Sam embraces him tightly, doesn’t realize he’s shaking until he feels Sam’s body shaking too. And it’s okay, this fear, because Sam’s got it too. The vibrations reverberate through them both, reminding Dean that he and Sam. They’re alive.  
  
For now, anyway.  
  
Minutes, hours, pass and they just sit there, stretched across the seat, arms entwined. Dean’s got his forehead on Sam’s shoulder and an ankle looped around Sam’s leg and no, he’s _not_ going to start thinking about how right this feels, because—no.  
  
The whole world’s falling apart, and the same bit of him that sometimes thinks _maybe_ knows that right now the answer is _never._  
  
After awhile though the shaking stops, and Dean takes a deep breath before pulling away.  
  
“We gotta get a move on,” he says grimly.  
  
“Are you—“  
  
He bears down on the gas and they lurch forward. The side of the truck scrapes against a tree; Dean very carefully doesn’t think about how pissed Dad would be that he fucked up the truck and Sam doesn’t say a word, just clutches the door that much tighter.  
  
||  
  
It’s almost dark when the car revs through a cultivated line of bushes and onto an open road.  
  
Dean’s stopped noticing little things, like how the radio and clock are both dead and how Sam’s whoop-de-doo-dah satellite time GPS thingy watch won’t work, but when the car breaks out onto the dirt road and almost gets sideswiped by a minivan, he’s still aware enough to freak the fuck out.  
  
“What the hell is your problem?” he demands, jumping out of the truck, and the way his words still seem to echo doesn’t matter because Jesus fucking _Christ_ , a few more inches and that son of a bitch would’ve hit Sam.  
  
“Dean, wait!“  
  
“Hell no. This jackass wants to go, then we’ll—“  
  
The minivan door slides open to reveal a Glock aimed steadily at his forehead.  
  
For a second everything stops. The sky stays orange and no one else drops dead, but it’s the same kind of freakish re-alignment that happened back on the highway, when the whole world changes in the blink of an eye.  
  
Then the guy’s lying on the ground—the Glock flies up and shoots backwards—and Dean turns just in time to see Sam grab the gun out of thin air like it’s nothing.  
  
Well, that’s just terrific.  
  
It’s even better when the other guy in the van jumps on Dean’s back and sticks a knife in his side because hey, the world apparently didn’t suck _quite_ enough. Now, though, there’s pain tearing through him and yelling and world-spinning for real. It’s the apocalypse all over again, except this time he cares.  
  
He’s distantly aware of Sam yelling some word he’s not even sure he knew about before Sammy let loose with it, but he blacks out before he has a chance to laugh.  
  
||  
  
“You really are a jackass, you know.”  
  
Sam’s voice is inches from his ear and Dean reaches out automatically to slap him away—but the second he flings his right arm out his entire side catches on fire.  
  
“Augh, shit!”  
  
Large, cool hands closing around his shoulders, forcing him to lie back down—where? His eyelids feel like lead but he opens them anyway.  
  
Sam’s concerned face comes into focus first, followed by the peaked fabric overhead. He’s lying on a sleeping bag, but the bruises on his back make the ridged bed of the truck that much more uncomfortable. “Sure the tent is safe?”  
  
He hates the laughter that escapes Sam right then. His face looks—not joyful, the way it should whenever Sam laughs. Weary. Cynical, even. “Nothing’s safe.”  
  
“Shut the fuck up. You know what I mean.”  
  
“Yeah, it should be fine.” Sam leans against the side of the truck, stretching the tent fabric. “We need to have someplace to stay.”  
  
“Motel rooms are—“  
  
“Filled with dead people.” And the quiet pain in that voice makes Dean wonder just what happened when he was out.  
  
“Sammy—“  
  
“I killed the guys and raided their supplies. That’s where the bandages came from.” A long, thin finger brushes the bandage. Dean tells himself it’s the pain that makes his stomach twist like that. “There was a motel down the road, but…”  
  
Now Sam’s the one who’s shaking. Dean tries to embrace him but his right arm won’t fucking _move_ , so instead of flinging an arm around his brother’s shoulders he slings his left arm over Sam’s chest and rolls over, flopping down on top of him.  
  
“Hi,” he says, grinning into Sam’s astonished face.  
  
“Okay, forget the whole jackass thing. You’re just _crazy._ ”  
  
“What? I’m tired and you’re a lot less lumpy than the damn truck bed.” He’s feeling oddly giddy—hysteria, the part of him that still has common sense tells him. But who said he had to listen to it?  
  
His fingers stray down to his baby brother’s stomach, which is just fit enough to make him vaguely jealous. “Actually, you’re kind of lumpy too.”  
  
“Dean. C’mon, man, stop it.”  
  
Sam still doesn’t even sound remotely annoyed, which pisses Dean off because he’s practically panicking. Completely unfair that they both shouldn’t be freaking out.  
  
Desperate times, then. “So, how long do you think we’ve got before we bite it?”  
  
But instead of freaking out Sam just grips his arms hard enough to bruise. Little bastard.  
  
Or actually, he thinks as Sam flings him over and down onto the sleeping bag again, _big_ bastard.  
  
“Go back to sleep,” Sam orders, voice as steady as if this is just a normal day and they’re not maybe going to die any second. “We’ll deal with the fact that you’ve clearly gone insane tomorrow.”  
  
He’s got a biting retort, he really does—but it’s lost when the pain creeps up on him again. Dean falls asleep clenching his jaw, hands in fists, just trying to hold on.  
  
||  
  
When he wakes up again the tent cover’s off the truck bed and he’s staring up at the bright orange sky. He can feel Sam behind him, probably stretched out horizontal and making himself as uncomfortable as hell. “How long was I out?”  
  
“Couple hours. It’s midnight now.”  
  
The sky is fucking _glowing._ “Hunh.”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
A pause as Dean thinks back on before. His side still hurts but it’s a little less acute, enough so that he remembers his behavior and flushes with embarrassment. _Nice, Dean. Real nice._ “So...”  
  
“So.”  
  
“End of the world.”  
  
“So it seems.”  
  
Damn, they’ve got their work cut out for them. “Think government records’ll be down?”  
  
“They might be. The Internet would still technically exist even if whatever happened wiped out all the phone lines, since a lot of it’s wireless now, but whether or not the stuff is actually accessible depends on if the satellites have...” Sam drifts off, his babbling turning into painful silence.  
  
Dean doesn’t bother looking up, doesn’t waste time with asking what’s wrong, just pats the sleeping bag beside him. “Lie down, Sir Geek.”  
  
“What, we’re knights now?”  
  
“Sure, why not? For all we know, we’re the last people on earth.”  
  
The truck’s fucking huge so it doesn’t even move when Sam lies down beside him; Dean tilts his head a little to look at his brother’s profiles, small and scared in the orange light form the sky. “Would you stop joking about it?”  
  
Sam doesn’t get it, never has. Doesn’t understand that jokes are all Dean has left and if he lets go of them then he’ll look up at the sky and see what it really is, the end, a huge pair of scissors snipping off the timeline and leaving them to fall right off of it.  
  
He never even got to rent _The Da Vinci Code_ , dammit.   
  
“Never mind,” Sam says, and Dean realized he never answered. Well.  
  
Doesn’t matter.  
  
Dean moves over just a bit and Sam lets him, his arm coming out and pulling Dean in like it’s the most natural thing in the world. Maybe it is right now.  
  
They don’t sleep, just stare at the sky for what feels like forever, watching the colors shift from orange to black and then back to orange.   
  
There’s a joke about Halloween in there somewhere, Dean thinks, but he doesn’t know how to find it anymore.  
  
||  
  
For three days they drive, taking back roads and side highways, doing anything they can to avoid the huge black columns of smoke and the stench of rotting flesh that lurks just off the next exit. Once or twice Dean mentions getting food, but then a squirrel will walk by and Sam’ll shoot it or Dean will take out a rabbit and they’re good for another day.  
  
Dean doesn’t ask what’ll happen if the animals start dying too, and in return Sam doesn’t ask what happens when the bullets run out.  
  
Sam drives most of the time because Dean’s side is fucking killing him. He doesn’t mention infection and neither does Sam, not even every night when they stop and Dean clutches Sam’s hand in the bed of the truck as Sam douses the cut in alcohol and mutters healing words.  
  
On the third day they pass still another exit. They’ve been following this highway for awhile now; they chose it simply because what cars there are have crashed mostly on the side of the road. Four hours ago, on a different road, they ran into a ten-car pileup. Dean doesn’t think he’s likely to forget the look on Sam’s face when they turned around any more than he’ll forget seeing the broken bodies, oozing fluid from the few spots that weren’t obscured by swarms of red-eyed flies.   
  
They’re about to pass Exit 237A, but Dean feels—something—just different enough for him to say, “Stop.”  
  
His voice is hoarse; he can’t remember the last time either of them spoke.  
  
“Why?” But Sam’s easing off the gas and turning towards the exit. “You sure, man?”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
His right hand tenses on the seat as they pull up onto the ramp and creep forward cautiously. Dean knows that they won’t find anything—and that’s another funny thing, the knowing, but if Sam’s gonna leave it alone then he sure as hell is too—but all the same, he almost winces when they pull out onto the road a few hundred feet up.  
  
They both stop short at the sight before them, and for one wild moment Dean wishes they’d just found a passel of dead bodies instead of the sight before them.  
  
Tents cover the highway, at least ten of them—a few colorful, most plain canvas. The few open bits of pavement reveal scorch marks, and either side of the highway is littered with twisted metal. Dean doesn’t even want to know what they’ve done with the bodies.  
  
“Should we turn around?” Sam asks in a low voice.  
  
Dean opens his mouth to answer in the affirmative, maybe with a few choice cuss words tossed in, but when he speaks he says, “No. Not yet.”  
  
Sam shoots him a sideways glance. Dean tries to stay casual, like he actually knew what he was going to say before he said it. “Okay, then.”  
  
“Hey there!”  
  
A woman comes out of the nearest tent. She’s small and stout, dependable looking; the image is reinforced by the toddler trailing behind her. Dean puts on a charming smile. “Hello there, ma’m. Can I ask what we’ve stumbled on?”  
  
“Buncha lost people, what’s it look like?”  
  
Sam holds in laughter as she sizes them up. Dean debates on stepping on his toes or ‘accidentally’ kicking him in the shins, but settles for smiling at the woman in what he hopes is a charming way. “We’re just passing through, but we were hoping—“  
  
“Everyone’s just passin’ through,” she interrupted him. “We’re all wanderers. That’s why we’re still alive.”  
  
“What do you mean?” Sam interrupts hastily.  
  
“The virus was targeted towards civilians,” a crisp voice says. Dean whirls around, but the newcomer isn’t exactly a threat—he’s the weedy scientist type. “It was dispensed through nuclear-powered stealth bombs, with each strain of the virus being targeted towards a certain body of people. Being travelers, none of us caught it.”  
  
“So…why’re you sticking around?”  
  
The man smiles wryly. “From the bandage on your side, I gather you’ve discovered that some of the remaining inhabitants of this planet are less than friendly.”  
  
It’s a hell of a lot of words to say that they’re sticking together because there’s strength in numbers, but since the geek hasn’t tried to kill him yet and the woman hasn’t decided to cook him Dean decides they can put up with these people. His instincts (or freakish Winchester psychic powers—whatever) are almost never wrong.  
  
“So,” he says with a grin. “Got a spare spot for our truck?”  
  
||  
  
A week after the attack of Who the Fuck Knows What, as Dean’s privately termed it, and they’re sitting round a campfire telling stories to the other survivors. Or, more accurately, Dean’s sitting around the fire whose shifting colors match the sky, and Sam’s over in their tent, brooding.  
  
After he’s finished telling the group of kids about the Wendigo he says goodnight and hops into the tent, ignoring the giggles that always follow him.  
  
“What crawled up your ass and died?” he asks by way of greeting.  
  
Sam looks up, those huge puppyish eyes of his making him look more tragic than the Who the Fuck Knows attack, Hiroshima, and the Titanic combined. “Why are we here, Dean?”  
  
It’s a good question; too bad he doesn’t have an answer. “Look, I just know we need to stick around here for awhile.”  
  
“But there’s dozens of people wandering around without any way to protect themselves. We shouldn’t be staying in one place, we should be out there helping!”  
  
The fact that Sam’s nauseatingly right pisses Dean off. “Look, man, can’t you just let it rest? I told you, we gotta stay here for awhile. I never acted like this when you went all Ghost Whisperer on me.”  
  
“Yes you did.”  
  
Dammit. Fucking logic. “And you told me to shut up, so now I’m telling you: quit bitching, or I’ll feed you to that rottweiler.” The dog in question belonged to one scary-ass group of dykes. Dean’s balls hurt just looking at them.  
  
Silence greets his order. Dean takes it to mean assent and even forgiveness, so he flops down on top of Sam—body heat conservation and all that—and falls asleep.  
  
||  
  
Two weeks.   
  
Dean wakes up feeling fresh as a daisy. He’s almost used to this, getting up and feeling healthy and awake. It would freak him out if it wasn’t for the weird feeling in the pit of his stomach.  
  
_Stay,_ it whispers, and Dean listens.   
  
Last time he didn’t, Dad died.  
  
Sam is snoring next to him. Putting the greenish tent up over the truck bed is routine, not because they need the covering (it hasn’t rained. Two weeks, and it hasn’t rained), but more because staring up at an orange sky and trying to sleep is a bit much even for them.  
  
But the sky’s more intense than it was awhile ago and the tent is starting to heat up, so Dean figures it’s daytime.  
  
“Wake up, man.”  
  
It’s funny, seeing Sam sleep, because until this thing started Sam was always up and researching hours before Dean even started considering maybe getting out of bed. There’s probably something Sam’s not telling him, some reason that he tosses and turns and scowls even when he’s supposed to be off in dreamland, but if there is he’s not telling.  
  
This is the first time in twenty-two years of living with Sam that Dean’s been willing to just let sleeping dogs lie.  
  
Sleeping. Lie. Heh.  
  
Sam’s eyes fly open—there’s no in between with them, no slow waking up. Dean remembers being amazed, first time he fell asleep with a girl, at how she drifted awake, yawning and mumbling for so fucking long he started to wonder if she had a disease. He figured at the time it was a girl thing, but then he slept with a guy and learned that no, waking up like you’re being attacked is just a Winchester thing.  
  
“Morning already?” Sam grouses, sitting up.  
  
“Close as it ever gets to morning anymore.”  
  
“Good.”  
  
Sam reaches up, same as he does every morning, and unzips the tent. Dean doesn’t really expect to see anything specific, since the scene’s always different each time—but if he had formed expectations, they wouldn’t have involved swarms of flies picking at the prostrate bodies of dozens of their fellow survivors.  
  
“Oh, _God!_ ” Sam yells, recoiling. For a second Dean thinks it’s because of the smell, but then he realizes that Sam is clutching his forehead desperately.   
  
“Sam? Sam!” And he’d like to be saying something more useful but Sam’s crouching on the ground, clearly in pain, and everyone outside—the dykes, that hot girl Mary, the cute little boy Brad—they’re all dead.  
  
“I can hear them,” he grits out through clenched teeth. “Dean, they’re—“  
  
But then something grabs the back of his neck, and he figures out the problem for himself.  
  
Zombies are a bitch to deal with no matter what, but Dean thinks that in some ways they’re worse when the bodies are fresh. The skin feels almost right but a bit too rubbery to be alive, and the eyes are still moist enough to glint from their sockets.  
  
Rotting skin and shriveled-up eyes are pretty fucking disgusting, yeah, but at least they’re honestly wrong. This not-quite-right-ness of the one currently dragging him backwards is almost enough to make him puke.   
  
“Sam!” he yells again, but Sam’s collapsed against the truck bed—he’s not going to be any help. Dean yanks downwards, pulling his head out of the thing’s fierce grip, before turning around and dealing it the hardest punch he can.  
  
The corpse’s head flies to the side and Dean hears the sickening crunch and tear of bones breaking. It won’t kill the thing, of course, but it slows it down enough so that Dean can run up into the truck and grab a gun.  
  
“Hold on, man,” he tells Sam, who somehow manages to glare at him despite clutching his head desperately. Dean grins and fires the gun, aiming for the head then the chest—where the damn thing’s most likely to be vulnerable.   
  
The bullet hits right between its forehead and then it’s down, a normal corpse again. He takes a deep breath, trying to make it okay, trying to stop the panic that’s making his hands shake—but.  
  
The camp had around twenty people, and right now they’re all getting up and moving towards him and Sam. Joan, the camp’s cook, is clutching a ladle like she intends to use it as a weapon.   
  
Well, fuck.   
  
There’s Brad, just a few feet away. He holds his toy rocket nose-first in his fist; blood still drips sluggishly out of his eye socket. Jesus, Dean played with the kid just last night, talked him into going to bed when his mom told him to. Now Brad and his mom, Joan and her husband—they’re all dead.  
  
And Dean has to put them to rest.  
  
He focuses on Sam behind him, on the pain his brother’s suffering and on the fact that there’s only one way to end that pain for sure. Gritting his teeth, he pulls the trigger.  
  
Lock, load, and fire over and over again; it’s getting easier to remember that they’re not human any more because they just keep shuffling forwards, not even registering when the people—things—beside them fall. There’s blood and… _tissue_ flying everywhere, but not for nothing did John teach his sons vigilance in _all_ situations.  
  
Lock, load, fire—and above all, _don’t think._  
  
It’s only when every single body in the camp has been laid to rest that Dean’s ears register the moans coming from behind him. He sets the safety and lays the gun down carefully before turning and hopping up into the truck bed.  
  
“You alright, baby brother?”  
  
The moniker earns him a swat to the thigh. Good, Dean thinks, pulling his hand up and massaging Sam’s neck.  
  
When Sam lifts his head, his cheeks are shiny where tears have fallen—not clear tracks but blotches that reveal how he’s tried to rub them off, how he’s clutched his own cheeks tightly like he thinks it’ll stop the pain.  
  
The twist in Dean’s stomach is almost more nauseating than the smell around them.  
  
“I can hear them,” he chokes out. “God, Dean—their minds were dead. Worse than dead. Empty and—evil. And I could feel it.”  
  
Dean embraces him the only way he knows how: rough, manly, definitely less than comforting. “Get up front,” he mutters. “We’re gonna get the hell out of here.”  
  
||  
  
The thing about the end of the world is that he keeps remembering the dumbest shit.  
  
It’s like driving off for vacation and realizing he left the stove on—or what Dean thinks driving off for vacation and realizing he left the stove on would feel like, at any rate. This little niggling suspicion at the back of his mind that he forgot something, the annoying nagging tic of _not quite right_.  
  
They’ve raided the tents of the camp and come up with enough ammo to keep them stocked for weeks, months if they’re careful. Dean knows now that that’s why they had to stay—but seeing Sam hold his head and try to block out his memories is enough to make that bit of _guiltrememberingpain_ overwhelm him.  
  
“Sam.”  
  
Their eyes meet in the rearview mirror, looking forward and back at the same time. Dean swallows heavily.  
  
“I—“  
  
_Love you._  
  
But it won’t come.  
  
“Buckle your seatbelt.”  
  
Sam laughs a little, hollowly, and obeys.  
  
||  
 


	2. Chapter 2

Part Two   
  
||  
  
He’s never been able to feel them like now.  
  
Before…everything…he could sometimes feel whispers, like cobwebs out of the corner of his eye. For the longest time he’d thought it was normal, until one day Dean called him a freak for knowing what Dean was going to say before he said it.  
  
That didn’t happen often, but—sometimes.  
  
But now he can feel everyone, every single member of the camp who’d been laid out and killed like so much trash, their bodies used for someone else’s purposes. They were all screaming in the mute, helpless shuffle that he’d come to associate with zombies, and on top of that was the deep malevolence that had created them in the first place.  
  
He’d wanted to die.  
  
Now he’s letting Dean drive as recklessly as he pleases, which in and of itself should be a sign to Dean that all isn’t well. But then, neither of them has been normal for a long time.  
  
It’s weird, thinking that they might not even know each other anymore.  
  
A few hours have passed before Sam gets up the energy to speak. “Dea—“  
  
It’s a hoarse, tortured noise, and he doesn’t even finish Dean’s name before water is shoved in his face.   
  
He guzzles it eagerly, the cool drops running into his mouth, down his neck. Life, they tell him.  
  
“What?”  
  
“Are we—shouldn’t we stop sometime?”  
  
Dean shakes his head grimly. “You wanna be overrun by zombie hoards?”  
  
Now is the time when Sam’s supposed to joke about Dean watching one too many movies—that or make a pissy face at him and say that “zombies” is inaccurate, so will Dean please say “reanimated corpses” before Sam has to smack him. It’s a sign of how purely wrong things are that Sam just nods and leans back in the seat, watching the hard-packed dirt of the road pass by.  
  
||  
  
Two days later Sam learns that he can, in fact, bend spoons.  
  
It’s an accidental discovery, like the guy who found penicillin except more important—to them, anyway. Dean taps him on the shoulder while he’s stirring the Rice Krispies they’d salvaged and then suddenly milk is in his eye and the bowl part of the spoon is twisted around the stem.  
  
Dean doesn’t even blink, just turns the shoulder clap into a hug and gets him some (stolen, like everything) napkins to clean up.  
  
The next day they’re attacked by a desperate father wielding a pistol. Sam makes the thing fly out of his hand and over to the side of the road. Dean doesn’t ask him about it, just grabs a pole from the back of the truck and knocks the guy out.  
  
||  
  
It’s been two weeks since the campsite and they haven’t seen a living soul for almost half that time. They’ve seen plenty of dead bodies, stinking and covered in flies, but—it’s weird, how quickly they get used to it. They’ve stumbled into towns filled with rotting corpses twice now, and the memory’s already fading.  
  
Sam is always in the passenger seat now, and when he grunts and grips the door handle a bit harder than Dean’s driving warrants, Dean avoids the town he’s about to drive into.  
  
They’ve seen other supernatural activity, ghosts and poltergeists and even the occasional sprite, but it’s the necromancers they have to avoid. “Fucking bastards, using the end of the world as an excuse for their shit,” Dean growls, and Sam doesn’t bother replying because he knows this is Dean’s way of telling him they’re alright.  
  
It’s around noon two and a half weeks after the campsite incident—they keep track by scratching a tent pole, and Dean’s careful to keep his watch dry and checks for spare batteries at every store they come to—and they’re resting. Sam’s taken his duffel back out of the back of the truck and is staring down at the smudged glass covering the picture he’s kept for five years.  
  
Mom and Dad, side by side. They’re so happy, and more than that they’re—innocent. Naïve, almost, and he knows he’s staring at two people who’ve been dead in some way for twenty years, but he still wishes fiercely that he could just reach out and protect them from the pain he knows everyone in the picture will soon suffer.  
  
“Want some lunch?”  
  
His head jerks up and he rushes to shove the picture back into his bag, but it’s too late: Dean’s already seen it. “What’ve you got there, Sam?”  
  
Sam feels himself drawing back. It’s not normal, not like how he would have been before…everything…but he can’t make himself be that way again.  
  
Not with Dean. Not with anyone, even if they’re not the only two left.  
  
“Nothing,” he says flatly, and shoves it back into his duffel.  
  
Or tries, anyway. Dean reaches out, lightning-fast (how many times was he almost killed before he learned to move like that?), and grabs the frame. The glass cracks, a fracture thinner than a hair, as he holds it up.  
  
Sam can’t run off but he can and does hide. By the time Dean looks up his face is blank, any tears he might’ve shed locked away for when the sky is rust-colored and they can sleep.  
  
“Jesus, Sammy.”  
  
But maybe he’s not as good as he thought he was, because Dean’s eyes are full of tears and his voice is cracking and _damn it,_ even Sam isn’t this strong. He can _feel_ Dean in the corner of his mind, breaking through the clumsy defenses, and almost before he knows what’s happening Dean’s got his arms wrapped around Sam tight and Sam’s sobbing into his shoulder like a baby.  
  
“When’re you gonna let them go?” Dean murmurs as the tears fall. “Why do you still hang onto them, Sam? They’re gone. It’s all gone.”  
  
_Gone._  
  
||  
  
By the time Sam can pull himself together enough to let go of Dean, the sky is dark orange—almost black in places. He finds himself staring at it, wondering if maybe the orange is a bit dimmer, if the sky is a little closer.  
  
He knows it’s not and that it might never be, but it doesn’t stop him from hoping.  
  
Minutes, maybe even hours later, he says softly: “Because it’s…Dean, this really is it. We don’t have anything else.”  
  
“We have each other.” Stubborn, belligerent. It shouldn’t be a comfort that the end of the world hasn’t changed Dean a bit, but it of course is.  
  
“There’s nothing wrong with wanting to remember.” Maybe he hasn’t changed much, either, because his voice is cracking and he can feel the old anger bubbling up.  
  
“There’s a difference between remembering and dwelling.”  
  
“Look around you!” And yeah, now he’s yelling, gesturing wildly, and he’d love nothing more than to plant his fist in Dean’s face. “We might as well remember, Dean. We don’t _have_ anything else!”  
  
Sam’s seen Dean angry. He’s seen him sad. But he’s never seen Dean’s face just—crumble, like what Sam has just said is the worst thing anyone could ever possibly say to him.  
  
And of the two of them Sam knows he’s more fucked up, more insane, but maybe Dean hasn’t been taking care of them as well as either of them thought. Maybe Dean’s more breakable than he’d realized.  
  
_No, Dean, Jesus, not you too…_  
  
But yes, him. Always. Both of them.  
  
Sam used to think distantly that maybe when he cried under the clear night sky God was watching and laughing. Now he doesn’t know if God’s laughing or crying but it doesn’t really matter—he hasn’t seen the stars in too long to keep any kind of faith.   
  
“Sam, just.” Grasping hands.   
  
“I’m here,” he finds himself whispering, and before he can really figure out what’s going on Dean’s face has smashed into his.  
  
_Smashed_. Really, it should hurt, but right now nothing hurts because everything does.   
  
Dean’s lips have found his, and somewhere in Sam’s mind he’s remarking on how completely crazy this is. Most of him, though, is focused on—kissing back. Holding. Clinging, actually; the thought just makes him grip Dean tighter, kiss ( _God_ ) him harder.  
  
It feels good. That’s the worst of it, the fact that holding his brother and kissing him like it’s—well, like it’s the end of the world—the fact that it feels better than good, incredible, has Sam’s hands shaking when they come up to cup Dean’s cheeks.  
  
And now they’ve parted and Dean is laughing at him because he’s _Dean_ , calling him a pussy and talking about what a girl he is.  
  
Sam just smiles, gritting his teeth and ignoring the hard-on that he definitely doesn’t have, and tries to remember that the sky is orange and zombies give him migraines instead of thinking about the way Dean is looking at him now.  
  
He’d never have thought, playing “end of the world” in the few elementary schools he went to, that the option other than death—which wasn’t an option, was it?—would be his _brother._  
  
Yet. It all makes a twisted kind of sense, even when Dean slaps him on the shoulder and says, “So. We headin’ out, or not?”  
  
And when his fingers just kind of tangle with Sam’s, Sam doesn’t think twice. He just climbs up into the car and lets Dean start it, never once taking his eyes off his brother’s face.  
  
The picture lies forgotten on the ground. Five miles pass by before Sam even thinks about it.  
  
He braces his hands on the dashboard and looks determinedly ahead at the forest made ghostly by the sick, pale orange light.  
  
He can’t afford to think of them now.  
  
||  
  
_Zombies._ It never stops sounding ridiculous.  
  
And they never stop hurting him.  
  
Two days have passed and they haven’t—they haven’t talked, despite the blank emptiness of the road ahead of them.   
  
Although it might have something to do with the fact that Sam’s currently on his knees and a persistent corpse is doing its best to slice Dean’s head open as Sam desperately tries to regain his own mind enough to hurl something, _any_ thing, at the monster.  
  
Funny how psychic powers are almost second nature now. Funny how they have to be.  
  
The thing’s flesh is rotting and stinking like all of them, but it’s mind is—God. _makeitstoppleasejuststoppleaseplease_ —  
  
“The power of Christ and all that shit! Die, bitch!” Dean proclaims theatrically, and he blows the thing’s head off.  
  
Okay, yeah, they stole three machine guns off that Hummer, but Dean’s being just a bit _extreme._  
  
Sam takes the hand Dean offers and pulls himself up. “Who do you think summoned that one?”  
  
Dean shrugs. “Some asshole thinks he’s a big shot, is all.”  
  
He looks at the wilting grass, the brown trees. “How long do you think we have?”  
  
A long pause. Fingers interlacing and Sam doesn’t try to stop it, because the past few days have taught him that out of all the wrong things in the world this is the closest to right.  
  
Maybe.  
  
Dean loads a new round and grins. “When the shot runs out, man.”  
  
It might be because there’s a three-foot-high Venus flytrap growing ten feet away (they thrive on decay, Sam remembers reading somewhere) and a zombie lying right next to them, but somehow that makes sense.  
  
“Right.”  
  
That night they sleep close enough together so that when Sam’s nightmares come—  
  
_flies buzzing over rotting corpses, an entire_ world _left to feed the vermin—_  
  
Dean is there to hold him still, whisper in his ear.  
  
Kiss him, and no they are _not_ talking about this.  
  
It’s not enough, but then it’ll never be enough unless they rewind the past two years or so. Sam settles for _almost_ and tries not to notice the tears on both their faces.  
  
||  
  
_Whispers in the night, shudders and moans.  
  
“No.”  
  
He’s not sure if he means it but he knows he whispers it over and over, _ no, _like a mantra that Dean muffles first with his lips and then…  
  
“Yes.” Both of them.  
  
Always._  
  
Later Sam wonders if it’s a dream. But Dean’s arms are like iron around him, and he knows that in the end, it doesn’t really matter.  
  
||  
  
“It’s okay, Sam.”  
  
He’s tossing and turning, feverish, because there’s an entire _band_ of them nearby and the emptiness is just—the _need_ and _death_ touch him even through the stone walls of the cave, even through Dean’s own touch, and it’s—  
  
Sometimes he wonders if he’s crazy, now.  
  
The problem with the end of the world is that it didn’t come the way anyone thought it would, and Sam’s positive that this shouldn’t have resulted. He shouldn’t be gasping in his brother’s arms, shouldn’t be kissing him, jerking him off, hoping against hope that if they do this enough they’ll both be _fixed_ so that the world doesn’t crumble to ash while they watch.  
  
But then, the world isn’t supposed to end. Maybe they’re even.  
  
“That was worse,” Sam says, gasping. Dean wordlessly hands him a water bottle. “I—why are they getting worse?”  
  
Dean shrugs. “The meek sure as fuck aren’t inheriting the earth. My guess is the more powerful necromancers are edging out the lesser ones.”  
  
“Wonderful.”  
  
“There’s such a thing as abuse of sarcasm, you know.”  
  
“You’re an abuse of sarcasm.”  
  
“That was genius, Sam. I’m in awe.”  
  
“Shut the fuck up.”  
  
The logical conclusion would be a punch. The end-of-the-world, orange-sky-and-zombies conclusion is. Well.  
  
Something else.  
  
It’s quick, like it always is, but afterwards they lie there stark naked, dicks flaccid and shoulders just barely touching. Dean’s staring at the stone ceiling like it holds all the answers to the universe.  
  
“How long?” _Will it ever end?_  
  
“I don’t know, Sammy.” His fist crashes into the floor, and Sam hears the sticky tear of skin and knows he’s going to be doing some bandaging later. “I—I don’t know.”  
  
||  
  
It’s not warm and it’s not comfortable and Dean has absolutely _no idea_ why they’re doing this.  
  
He’d tell himself that Sam’s just another warm body, but the thing about the end of the world is that there’s a lot of time to think, so lying to himself really isn’t as easy as it used to be.  
  
But it feels like a lie. Running his fingers along Sam’s abs, brushing his lips against his brother’s—it feels like the biggest, baddest lie Dean’s ever told.  
  
Then—there’s a little truth in it, maybe, because Dean knows that if he told Sam then Sam would knock him on his ass for calling this anything but real.  
  
Even now Sam’s groaning, wrapping his legs around Dean’s waist—making him feel, because that’s Sam’s job, practically. Fix Dean. Make him feel better so some monster doesn’t kill him in the dead of the—  
  
“ _Fuck,_ Sam,” Dean gasps. Sam’s grip on his dick flexes.  
  
“Not just yet,” he says in a low voice that Dean’s baby brother should _not_ be using.  
  
Except he is, and he’s kissing Dean and pushing his thumb _in_ and it’s too fucking good for this to be anything but real.  
  
“Sam, please…”  
  
“Shh.”  
  
Wet and hard, everything that sex should be, and the fact that it’s Sam, Sam who knows him better than _anyone—_  
  
It’s possible to keep your eyes open and shake frantically during a mind-blowing kiss. Dean knows, since he’s doing it. But when Sam’s fingers come up and brush against his eyebrows, gently urging him to close his eyes…  
  
It’s more than a little fucked up that the only time he sees stars anymore is when his brother’s curled up in his lap and jerking him off like there’s nothing left in the world. It’s a whole lot of fucked up that there _isn’t._  
  
“Sam, let me…”  
  
He pushes Sam down against the mat spread over the truck bed and nudges Sam’s shirt up. Sam’s arms wrap around him and it feels—weird. Because it’s Dean’s turn to be caring, but even as he yanks his little brother’s pants down he _feels_ Sam’s legs, arms, hips cradling him. Protecting him.  
  
It makes Dean snarl and kiss Sam angrily, teeth swiping out to graze Sam’s thigh and fingers finding their way to the sensitive hollow of Sam’s hip. Sam moans, writhes, and Dean takes maybe a little too much pleasure in holding him down as he licks up Sam’s dick, a long stripe that has both of them _whimpering._  
  
“Dean. Just—inside. Me.”  
  
He ought to say something mocking, maybe just stand up and walk away while tossing a few words about how wrong it is over his shoulder, but instead he just nods. “Let me…”  
  
Sam’s hands are caressing his back when he slides down his brother’s body. He pauses at the head of Sam’s dick and he lets himself lick the slit once, twirling his tongue and smirking inwardly at Sam’s strangled moan.  
  
Then he wedges his hands beneath Sam’s hips and shoves up, not trying to lift him as much as trying to get him to—  
  
Arch his hips, whimper a little, set his legs so he’s far enough up that Dean can grip his cock in one hand and use the other to stroke the inside of his thigh as he lowers his head and _licks._  
  
The sound Sam makes is completely worth the fact that his neck’s going to hate him later. The sounds, and the way Sam shakes, begging him not just with his voice but with his whole fucking body.  
  
“Dean, please, just—oh God, you’re— _Dean._ ”  
  
He circles the tight little hole with his tongue before plunging in, some part of his mind noting that it should be really nasty but the rest of him not even caring, because he’s got Sam—huge, annoying, too smart for his own good Sam—at his _mercy_ , and Dean’s going to enjoy every second of this.  
  
So he pumps Sam’s dick in time with the shallow thrusts of his tongue and God, Sam’s getting wetter and wetter with precome and keening now, whispering Dean’s name over and over till Dean barely even recognizes it.  
  
Dean himself is so turned on he can barely stand it; humping the rough truck bed just plain doesn’t cut it. And the fact that Sam won’t stop _petting_ him doesn’t help. A normal person would just grab Dean’s hair and pull till it hurt like hell, but Sam’s hands are running up and down his back, cupping his neck, clutching his arms…  
  
He pulls away for a second to mock his clearly gay brother, but—“God, Sam, you’re so fucking. _God._ ”  
  
Sam’s smile is tight and hot and that broken praise was _not_ what he wanted to say. “Just—keep going.”  
  
And Dean does.  
  
When Sam’s so close to coming that Dean can feel him starting to shake he eases off, licking the inside of Sam’s thigh and tightening his grip on Sam’s cock.  
  
“Dean…” Whining, almost.  
  
“Shh, it’s alright. I’ll let you come in a little while.” Sam’s body gets even tenser, and then Dean smiles. “Baby brother.”  
  
“Fucking—you _bastard_ ,” Sam moans, head thrashing. “I am going to _kill you._ ”  
  
“Yeah, whatever, you’re a pussy,” Dean says casually. Never mind that his own dick is throbbing and that if he doesn’t get something in him really damn soon they’re going to have some serious problems. Screwing around with Sam’s head is totally worth it.  
  
“No, it’s just—Dean. _Please._ ”  
  
Something about the way he says it has Dean nodding and moving up, fitting his mouth against Sam’s and his dick against Sam’s leg, not because humping is the best way to get off but because Dean is so fucking horny he barely knows which way is up.  
  
But Sam shoves at him gently. “Dean. Wait, I—wait.”  
  
Dean cocks an eyebrow. Cool and manly, that’s him. “You got a better plan.”  
  
“Actually, yeah. I, um. I’ve done this…a bit.”  
  
His little brother’s fucked a bunch of guys. Hunh. “What’s your plan, then, psychic boy?”  
  
Sam leans in to kiss him again, teeth pulling at his upper lip, and _fuck_ it’s so good that when Sam whispers “Lie back,” Dean just goes with it.  
  
Sam’s body slides down his, and for a second Dean’s mind wanders because his baby brother has muscles that are somehow _more_ defined than Dean’s own, even though Sam spent four years sitting on his ass at some wimpy smart kid college.  
  
Freak.  
  
He’s so distracted by the muscles and the writhing and the petting that he doesn’t notice the slick finger (and honestly, _lube?_ They’re gonna have to talk about Sam’s apparent freakish obsession with planning ahead) until it’s already up to the second knuckle in his ass.  
  
And then he _notices._  
  
“Ohgod.” A sharp intake of breath accompanies Dean’s hips stabbing the air like the biggest moron on the planet, but Dean is perfectly fucking fine with that because Sam is—Jesus, is that his g-spot? Guys—they don’t _have_ —  
  
Larger. Two fingers, long calloused wet _hot_ fingers, and now Dean’s babbling and gasping and moaning but as long as Sam keeps going he honestly doesn’t give a flying fuck.  
  
Then—emptiness, and Dean’s whimpering kind of embarrassingly, but then Sam’s hands are on his hips and his lips are brushing over Dean’s.  
  
“Shh,” he says, tongue darting out to caress Dean’s bottom lip. Before Dean has a chance to tell Sam to cut it out, he’s not some kind of girl, Sam’s hips are thrusting and—  
  
Fuck.  
  
It’s not supposed to feel this good, Sam gripping him and pushing in. Because it _burns_ , and it’s awkward as hell—but it’s Sam and it’s _real_ and in this world where nothing from the trees to the people to the fucking sky makes sense, this does.  
  
So Dean arches back, gripping Sam tight enough to bruise and pushing back, head spinning more than it does when he looks up at night and sees the sky sickly and orange above him.  
  
“Dean. I—so goddamn _tight—_ ”  
  
“Never. Uh. Before,” he pants, angling his hips till—yeah, there—  
  
“I—I can’t—“  
  
Then, for some reason that will probably make sense later, after five years of therapy, or maybe never since the end of the world’s already come and psychologists, as it turns out, are not the best at wilderness survival—but Dean’s tangent of thought is cut off because right then their eyes meet and it’s _Sam._ His brother, his—  
  
_His._  
  
Sam stills and lets go, seizing Dean’s hands in his own like it’s the most important thing he’s ever done, and as they come and his fingers entwine with Dean’s, Dean thinks that maybe it is.  
  
||  
  
Sam loses count after the two month mark.  
  
It’s not a conscious decision; he just wakes up one day and realizes that for _he doesn’t know how long_ he hasn’t been marking days. When he thinks about it, really _thinks_ , he knows that he doesn’t care.  
  
They still—kiss, hold each other, fuck—sometimes. Not enough for it to really matter beyond the few moments they need to relieve the _painconfusionanger_ that they both feel.  
  
Sam’s learned how to shove aside everything but the worst pain. It’s not a skill he ever wanted to have but it’s useful, sometimes, like when he’s staring into the dead glassy eyes of a little girl and Dean is yelling at him to just shoot it in the fucking head, already.  
  
Sometimes he thinks his soul is dying, but it doesn’t really matter. The world they’re in now is…  
  
Empty, he thinks. Abandoned by whatever watched over Earth when the sky wasn’t the sick orange it is now.  
  
He’s not sure which is worse, the days full of nothing but silence between the two of them or the days when they’re accosted by desperate innocents, people who never committed a crime in their lives but have been sentenced to the closest human imitation of hell a world of despots could conceive.  
  
There aren’t just ghost _towns_ anymore; the entire world is filled with the dead or the dying, their stench enough to overpower what little new growth he and Dean see.  
  
But he can’t _do_ anything, since he doesn’t think Dean would really support him committing suicide at this point. So instead he shoulders his gun during the day, clutches Dean close to him at night, and tries not to think.  
  
Yet. There’s a fine line between thinking and feeling, and the day Sam slams in a baby’s head and doesn’t think twice as the last glossy sheen of borrowed life fades from its eyes…the day that happens and he shuts out the screaming, the agony that being Sam Winchester has brought him, he knows he’s no more human than the corpses he’s destroying.  
  
||  
 


	3. Chapter 3

Part Three

 

  
||  
  
It’s bad enough that the world’s pretty much ended—well, except for the fact that it’s _not_ and that’s part of the problem. Everybody talks—talked—about the end of the world like it was this huge thing, but in fact it’s just a whole lot of confused people running around and getting in Dean’s fucking _way_.  
  
Along with zombies, of course.  
  
And fucking his brother on a regular basis, which Dean’s pretty sure wouldn’t be happening if everything else wasn’t so weird.  
  
But even worse than the not-end of the world and the real-life game of Death is Not an Option that he and Sam are playing is the fact that Sam himself is falling apart. He wakes up in the morning and eats whatever they’ve managed to steal, shoots the goddamn zombies and rides along in the passenger seat, but the way he does it makes Dean constantly wonder if his next move is going to be to try gobbling up some of Dean’s own brains. It’s not exactly relaxing.  
  
He’d like to say something, but aside from “so I called Superman and he says he’ll hop out of the comic books and make the world okay again tomorrow”, he’s pretty sure there’s nothing he can say or do that’ll make whatever’s up with Sam any better. Dean’s not the psychic wonder; he has hunches, but that’s it. He’s never heard, felt, whatever it is that makes Sam collapse in agony on a pretty regular basis.  
  
Of course, he can’t pick a fucking _semi_ up with his mind and hurl it at fifty zombies, either.  
  
“Dean! Would you please de-animate the corpses!” Sam’s hands are clapped over his ears in a probably futile attempt to block out the usual crazymaking dean hum he’s told Dean about.  
  
“Zombies. They’re zombies,” Dean corrects, almost absentmindedly, as he fires round after round into the crowd. Jesus—it’s bad enough that they had to come into this town in the first place. They’ve managed to avoid large cities, for the most part, but according to a road sign they’re in Minneapolis.   
  
There aren’t as many dead bodies as there should be. Amazing how Dean actually counts that as a bad thing.  
  
When the last zombie is lying on the ground, Sam sets the truck down gently. Dean doesn’t bother yelling at him that it doesn’t matter since the owner of the truck is lying dead somewhere, because if he does then Sam will give him that _look_ , the “not only are you not getting laid tonight but I think I might actually hang myself from the ceiling rafters!” glare that always makes Dean do idiotic things like grovel extensively.  
  
No, he’s definitely not gonna put himself through that.  
  
He just shoves the guns back in his bag and says, “Let’s get the hell out of here.”  
  
If ghosts were really following them, Dean’d just shoot ‘em full of holes. Still, it feels like the souls of everyone he just gunned down are nipping at his heels.  
  
||  
  
Two weeks after Minneapolis they stumble across a bunch of dead guys in a South Carolina swamp.  
  
They’ve been sticking to the woods because lately there seem to be more corpses around than ever, and there’s only so many times Dean can tell Sam that they can’t save everybody before he starts to doubt it himself.  
  
But this swamp isn’t like any of the woods they’ve been in before. The thick, hot air weighs on Dean’s lungs, and he feels sweat trickling down his neck as he pushes wet leaves aside.  
  
The ground is actually _steaming_ , and for a fraction of a second Dean thinks it’s the mud that smells so bad.  
  
Then they find the bodies.  
  
Five of them, the backs of their heads torn out, flecks of blood everywhere. Their eyes are mostly gone, eaten by maggots that burrow into the skin everywhere—maggots who are the offspring of flies that suddenly buzz around in clouds thick enough so that when Sam takes a few steps away from Dean, he might as well have dropped off the face of the earth for how well Dean could see him.  
  
“Sam!”  
  
His fingers brush against flesh, but it’s—mushy and _wiggling_. Dean never knew he could recoil as fast as he does. “Sam, dammit, answer me!”  
  
When he hears the retching he stumbles backwards, towards the noise. “Sam, Sammy,” and yeah, he’s babbling, but the memory of the bodies and the red-eyed flies fucking _swarming_ around him make it so that he doesn’t even fucking care.  
  
“Dean,” Sam whispers. Long, thing fingers encircle his ankle.  
  
Dean drops to his knees. “Are you—“  
  
Bleak eyes meet his own. “They were _kids_ , Dean. Just—little kids, and I—“  
  
“It’s okay.” He holds tighter to Sam, willing him to just _stop shaking._ “We’re gonna be okay.”  
  
||  
  
It was fall when the world ended.   
  
It’s winter when it begins again.  
  
At first Dean thinks his eyes are playing tricks on them. It’s been more than a year under the orange sky—stuff’s dying every day, and the food’s starting to run out. Even though they’re somewhere in the South, it’s freezing cold at night; to preserve energy (they still lie to themselves and to each other, and sometimes Dean thinks it’s just because the lying is normal, real), they’re holding each other close.  
  
Sam’s sleeping. They had a long day, two zombies and Sam learning how to hurl _five cars_ with his brain like some kind of fucking _superhero_ , or maybe just that guy from the Matrix—but Dean’s wide awake, as usual.  
  
He hasn’t gotten much sleep for oh, the past year or so.  
  
So really, it’s no wonder that it takes him forever in a day to notice that the sky’s not just turning the darker orange it does at night. Enough weird and fucked-up things have happened that he barely even notices the sky color anymore.  
  
But then…  
  
There’s a _hole._  
  
And at first he doesn’t want to hope, because how many times has he let himself think that maybe things are starting to change, only to realize seconds or days later that they’re just getting worse? But then—  
  
A star.  
  
Faint and still kinda orange looking, but it’s _there_ , for the first time in a year.  
  
Dean does the first thing he thinks of: he digs an elbow into Sam’s side.  
  
“Ow! Wha—“  
  
“Sam—Sammy! Look!”  
  
“Dean, are you in _sane?_ ” Sam asks blearily. “It’s the middle of the night and it’s freezing. Go back to sleep.”  
  
“Dude, shut the fuck up and look at the sky.”  
  
“Why would I—oh.”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
“Oh my _God._ ”  
  
Somehow Sam’s hand comes down to grip his, and if they live through this then Dean’s going to give Sam hell about acting like a girl, but right now he just twines his finger’s in Sam’s and watches.  
  
The hole gets wider, the orange clouds—if that’s what they are—actually swirling _away_. One star becomes two, then three, and then—  
  
“I—Dean.”  
  
The orange is barely a line on the horizon; before them is an entire sky full of stars neither of them ever thought they’d see again.  
  
Sam pulls Dean’s fingers up to his lips, and it feels easy. Right.  
  
“We’re—“  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
“It’s going to be okay.”  
  
Dean lets out a whoop of laughter. “Hell yeah! We’re free, man! We’re— _fuck_ yeah!”  
  
When Sam gets tired of his antics and stalks off to pee, he stops for a moment and cocks his head at the sky.  
  
Millions—no, make that _billions_ of people have probably died in the past year. The good old U. S. of A. that Dad always talked about is gone. There’s a pretty good chance they’ll get radiation sickness and grow fins, or something.  
  
But Dean can see the sky.  
  
He lets a tiny grin curl his lips. “’bout time,” he mutters, before lying back and waiting for Sam to return.  
  
Because he kind of wants to make out under the stars.  
  
||  
  
End  
  
||  
 


End file.
